1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for obtaining plug combination of detecting apparatus and an electronic using the same, and also relates a method for obtaining power line topology.
2. Description of Related Art
A traditional electric meter/smart electric meter is usually an information closed system configured to provide household or enterprise a bill from last month or counted within a period of time, such that users can know how much electricity has been used only after receiving the bill. The smart electric meter can display real-time power consumption information of household or enterprise but cannot inform power consumption information of individual appliance to the users. In the absence of the power consumption information of the appliances, the smart electric meter cannot effectively confine or be aware of power-consuming appliances and inform the user about causes of the power consumption, and thus the users are unable to improve or manage the power consumption.
In the Nonintrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) technology, one single electric meter is used to monitor changes in power signal signatures (e.g., a total voltage and a total current in a power loop), so as to identify the appliance currently power usage and states thereof. In comparison with a power consumption monitoring apparatus that installs the smart electric meter on each socket, the NILM technology is capable of significantly reducing installation costs to be more acceptable for the users.
The NILM technology can be used to understand usage states of the appliances. In previous approaches, various appliance load signatures are collected in advance and served as training data, so that the usage states of the appliances can be identified later by using different detecting methods proposed by researchers. However, in actual environments, the usage states of the appliances can change due to inconsistent quality of power supply, resulting that the detected usage states of the appliances being different from the appliance load signatures previously collected and trained. Aforesaid situation can generate errors in the identification, which are challenges to be faced in implementation of the NILM technology.
For instance, in addition to a source of the power supply, the quality of power supply is also highly correlated to a location of each socket in space and a distance between power lines thereof. When a distance between the socket and the electric meter is shorter, an output voltage of the socket is less likely to offset too much from a voltage provided by an electric power company due to attenuation generated by a power transmission line. However, when the distance between the socket and the electric meter is longer, the output voltage of the socket may be offset too much from the voltage provided by the electric power company, such that the power signal signatures generated by the appliance plugged on the socket and measured by the electric meter can exhibit greater attenuation due to a length of the power transmission line being longer. Therefore, if a power line topology structure between the electric meter and each socket can be accurately obtained, the NILM technology will be capable of further improving accuracy in the identification of the appliances.
The users may measure power information of each socket by a method of connecting one or more detecting apparatuses one by one to each socket, such that the power line topology structure can be deduced by integrating the power information. However, this method has lower efficiency which leads to increases in costs. Specifically, in order to deduce the power line topology structure, in addition to measurement of impedance between a socket and a general supply (e.g., a power distribution line from the electric power company), it is also required to measure a socket relationship between the sockets (e.g., a differences between voltage values of the sockets and a sequential relationship thereof), so as to correctly identify whether the power transmission line between the sockets corresponding to the same power line topology structure is a structure in cascade link or in branch link.
For instance, when only one detecting apparatus is provided, the users need to connect the detecting apparatus with the sockets one by one in order to measure the power information of each socket. In a condition where the socket relationship between the sockets is to be measured, it is difficult to perform such measurement by using one single detecting apparatus.
Further, even if a plurality of detecting apparatuses are provided, if all of plug combinations between the detecting apparatuses and the sockets are only tested randomly without properly arranging a sequence of the plug combinations between the detecting apparatuses and the sockets, an efficiency of the entire measurement would be decreased. Moreover, if there is a large amount of the sockets corresponding to the same power line topology structure, the sequence of possible plug combinations will be increased accordingly to further reduce the efficiency of the entire measurement.